Antioxidant potential and its correlation with phenolic compounds and flavonoids contents of methanolic extracts from different medicinal plants

Resumo

In this study, the methanolic extracts of ten species of medicinal plants collected at Gurupi - TO, were submitted to the assays of neutralization of the radicals ABTS and DPPH, ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), and reduction potential to investigate the antioxidative potential. The results revealed that the assessed plants present strong antioxidant activities, with the species Buchenavia tetraphylla, Buchenavia tomentosa, and Lippia sidoides presenting the strongest activities, as well as the largest content of phenolic compounds and flavonoids. Using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, we could observe the correlation between the phenolic compounds content and the antioxidant activities in all the assays. On the other hand, we could not observe satisfactory correlations between the flavonoids content and such activities, which suggests that the phenolic compounds are the main contributors to the antioxidative potential presented by the extracts of the medicinal plants studied.